About 250,000 people gathered in the streets around Lotta's Fountain in downtown San Francisco to hear Luisa Tetrazzini give a free concert on Christmas Eve, 1910. According to her contract with Oscar Hammerstein, impresario of the Metropolitan Opera Company, Tetrazzini was barred from singing under any management but his. Tetrazzini disputed the contract, and got around the restriction by staging a free concert (against her policy of ever singing for nothing) for her favorite audience, the people of San Francisco. At the end of the concert, the crowd joined in in singing "Auld Lang Syne." By all accounts, it was a powerful, moving event that deeply touched those present. Tetrazzini was to talk about it as her most enthusiastic audience ever, and as her "night of nights," for the rest of her life.
SFPALM